So, I started reading Order of the Stick the other day. I got up to the part where Haley starts speaking in gibberish. It is clearly a letter replacement cipher. I was just saying today that I have a spreadsheet that can do Rot-N's. I tried running it through that, but no go, not a Rot-N cipher.

Also, I noticed that looked like the cipher changed on each page of the comic. So I decided I needed a tool, since I wasn't just solving a single cipher. I needed a tool that would take a list of letter replacements and output partial dechipherments based on it. The problem is I had to prevent rule feeding ("e > p, p >s" needs to not end up making e's into s's). After some messing around (for an hour or so), I got the python Sound Change Applier to do what I wanted, by importing a set of rules to turn all letters into meaningless symbols, then set up rules for the turning the meaningless symbols back into letters.

Once I got that, the pages where Haley talks alot go really fast. It's really fun putting in a few letters, getting a partial result, finding the next words you can now read, putting in a few more letters, etc.

There's several pages where she say much, or no readily guessable words, so I haven't dechipered those pages yet. I've found 2 errors on the author's part so far, that also makes it a little harder.

After doing a few, I started finding pages I could do in my head :D

status update:
247 lots, done
248 few lines, not done
249 one line, not done
250 one word, not done (impossible?)
251 few lines, done (error)
260 one line, not done
262 lots, done
264 few lines, done
268 one-line, done (no file)
269 one-line, not done
? one word, done (no file)
277 one-line, not done
284 lots!, done
285 one line, done
291 one line, done
296 one line, done (errors)
298 one word, done (no file)
303 no wordsm sound effects done where possible (no file)
309 lots, don... Ah! Migraine spots! Can't see!